He was back at the starting point. Again.
Okay. So it wasn't a one-time thing.
Liang Zhenfeng stood thirty meters ahead. Same position. Same sheathed sword. As if nothing had happened.
"System."
[Yes?]
"Is this a bug?"
[No.]
"He killed me twice and I didn't see him move either time. I didn't even feel it. That's not a bug?"
[The simulation is functioning correctly. You are simply too weak to perceive what is happening.]
Too weak to perceive what's happening. Not too weak to react. Too weak to SEE.
He stood there for a while.
And then he thought about Wen Jiayi's father.
Tier 7 MId. Stronger than the man who'd just killed him twice without visibly moving.
"So, Mr. Wen, I've been courting your daughter—"
Dead. I'd be dead before the sentence ended. Faster than Liang Zhenfeng killed me just now. At least the professor had the decency to wait for me to take a step.
That conversation is happening after I reach at least T4. Minimum. Possibly T5. Possibly never.
"System. Is there an option to reduce the opponent's tier?"
[Tier can be adjusted. Reducing to T1 will remove all skills above T1 threshold. Only foundational techniques will remain.]
"Do it. T1."
[You're too weak for T1. Recommended: attribute equalization.]
"And he'd still have all his technique? Just no stat advantage?"
[Correct. Foundational swordsmanship only, no skills. Attributes mirrored.]
The system wasn't wrong. That didn't make it sting less.
"Fine. Equalize."
The air shifted. The pressure was gone. That invisible weight from standing near something catastrophically above him. Just... gone.
Same experience. Same two centuries of swordsmanship. Just my stats now.
His hand went to the hilt of his sword. The T1 Rare blade he'd carried since the ruins. He'd only used it once since then, and not for fighting. He drew it.
It felt lighter than he remembered. Or maybe his arms were stronger.
He took a step forward.
Liang Zhenfeng's hand moved.
The draw was beautiful. Smooth, economical, the blade leaving the sheath in a single arc straight into a lateral cut at his neck.
Yan Ye saw it. All of it. The hand, the draw, the angle, the trajectory.
The sword reached his neck and the world reset.
He was back at the starting point. Heart hammering, breath ragged, phantom sensation of something cold across his throat.
I saw that one.
I saw it clearly.
And I still couldn't move.
That was almost worse than the T7 deaths. At least those he could blame on the gap. This time everything was equal. And he lasted the same amount of time.
So that's what real swordsmanship looks like. Cool. I hate it.
He counters with a lateral draw-cut when I approach head-on. What if I expect it?
He walked forward. Same approach. Liang Zhenfeng drew. Same angle, same speed.
This time Yan Ye was ready. He'd already decided: sidestep left, avoid the arc, close the distance.
His body started the sidestep. Liang Zhenfeng's blade changed trajectory mid-swing. The sword followed him left as if it knew.
Reset.
Shit.
He adjusted mid-swing. How? The sword was already moving. How do you change direction on a blade that's already committed?
Because it wasn't committed. He left room in the arc. The cut looked full but it wasn't. There was slack built into the technique. Space to redirect.
He stared at the man thirty meters away.
I'm thinking about this like a game. Input, output, pattern, counter-pattern. But he's not a game boss with programmed moves. Even as a clone, even without real thoughts, the technique itself has more depth than anything I can brute-force.
But he IS a clone. An AI built from my observations. He uses the patterns I've seen in the videos. He can't invent new techniques. He can adapt within those patterns, but the patterns have edges. And if I die enough times, I'll find them.
He walked forward.
Death fourteen. The first time their swords actually met.
Yan Ye didn't try to attack. He planted his feet, raised his blade in a two-handed guard, and waited. Liang Zhenfeng closed the distance instead, drew, and cut.
Steel hit steel. The vibration shot up Yan Ye's arms and into his shoulders. His guard held for a fraction of a second before the angle of the professor's blade found the gap between his hands and slid through.
Reset.
But I blocked it. For half a second, I blocked it.
Death twenty-six. The first time he survived ten seconds.
He'd stopped trying to attack entirely. Pure defense. Reading the draw, predicting the angle, positioning his blade where he thought the cut would land. He was wrong more than half the time, but "wrong" now meant "wrong by fifteen centimeters" instead of "wrong by everything."
Somewhere around death thirty, a notification flickered in the corner of his vision.
[Skill Acquired: Novice Swordsman (Uncommon)]
He dismissed it without reading the details. The clone was already moving.
Death forty-one. Twenty seconds.
His footwork was changing on its own. His feet were finding positions that his brain hadn't consciously chosen. Step back at an angle instead of straight back. Pivot instead of shuffle. Small adjustments that bought fractions of seconds.
Death sixty-three. Thirty seconds.
His first real parry. Blade redirecting instead of absorbing. The professor's sword slid off his and Yan Ye had a quarter-second opening that he didn't know what to do with. He hesitated. The professor didn't.
Reset.
I had an opening and froze. Because I don't know how to attack yet. I've spent sixty-three deaths learning how not to die and zero deaths learning how to kill.
Death eighty-nine.
[Skill Acquired: Combat Reading (Uncommon)]
This one he felt. Something shifted behind his eyes. A second layer over his vision. The professor's stance stopped being a shape and started being information. Weight distribution: sixty percent back foot. Grip: loose, ready to adjust. Shoulder angle: preloaded for a horizontal draw.
He's going to cut left.
He cut left.
I knew that.
He still died. Seeing it coming and actually doing something about it were two different problems.
The hours blurred into each other. Pain does that.
Each death carried a toll. Almost negligible on its own. Like a thumbtack pressed against the inside of his skull. One thumbtack was nothing. A hundred was a headache. Two hundred was pressure behind his eyes that didn't fade between resets. Three hundred was thinking through static.
But the progress kept coming.
Death one-fifty. One minute. He could read the professor's basic combinations now. Draw-cut into overhead into thrust. Lateral feint into rising diagonal. The patterns had edges, just like he'd predicted. The clone recycled sequences, adapted within them, mixed them in different orders. But the building blocks were finite.
Death two-thirty something. He'd lost the exact count.
He died and the reset came and he just stood there. Looking at Liang Zhenfeng. The same man who'd killed him over two hundred times in the last twenty-something hours. Still standing. Still waiting. Patient as a statue.
A year ago I was worrying about bar exams.
He kept looking at the professor.
What the fuck am I doing?
The thought didn't have a follow-up. It just hung there.
He walked forward anyway.
Death three hundred and nine.
The last one that mattered.
He stood at the starting point and ran the math. Not numbers. Patterns. Liang Zhenfeng's opening sequence had six primary variations depending on whether Yan Ye approached center, left, or right, aggressive or passive, high or low guard. From each variation, two to three follow-ups. From each follow-up, transition points where the clone committed and couldn't redirect.
Don't try to win. Don't try to attack. Just survive.
He walked forward. Right angle approach. Mid guard. Sword at hip height, point forward.
Liang Zhenfeng drew. Variation three. Rising diagonal.
Yan Ye shifted his blade to intercept at the angle he'd learned across fifty deaths with this exact opening. Steel met steel. He didn't absorb. He redirected. The same parry that had taken him until death sixty-three to find, now automatic. The professor's blade slid off his and transitioned into a horizontal follow-up.
Expected.
Yan Ye stepped back. Gave ground. Let the blade pass two centimeters from his chest. Close enough to feel the displaced air across his skin.
That gap used to kill me. Now it's just uncomfortable.
The professor pressed. Overhead. Yan Ye caught it on the flat of his blade at a forty-degree angle, knees bending with the force, letting the impact travel down through his legs into the ground instead of fighting it head-on. Something his feet had figured out around death one-fifty. His arms had wanted to resist. His feet had known better.
He stepped offline. The professor rotated. Thrust.
Combat Reading screamed the trajectory before the blade moved. Center mass. Slight upward angle. Three-centimeter window of commitment on the extension.
Yan Ye turned his hips and let it pass his ribs. The tip of the blade grazed his shirt. He was already repositioning before it fully extended.
Thirty seconds.
The professor recovered and shifted stance. Draw-cut into lateral feint. Yan Ye recognized the combination from death one-twelve. Feint goes left, real attack comes from below. He dropped his blade low to intercept and caught the rising cut with a block that made his forearms ache.
Held it.
One minute.
Liang Zhenfeng's rhythm changed. Faster combinations. Less space between strikes. He was testing the edges of Yan Ye's pattern library, probing for gaps the same way Yan Ye had probed his.
Two quick lateral cuts. Yan Ye parried the first, sidestepped the second. A thrust he'd never seen from this angle. He twisted away ugly, off-balance, and somehow kept his feet.
That one was new. File it.
Ninety seconds. His breathing was ragged. His arms had stopped reporting individual pain and moved to a general broadcast of please stop. He ignored them. He'd been ignoring them for two hundred deaths. They could wait.
Two minutes.
The professor found a rhythm that Yan Ye almost couldn't track. Three-hit combination flowing into a fourth that changed depending on how Yan Ye responded to the third. If he parried high, the fourth came low. If he stepped back, the fourth was a thrust. If he sidestepped, the fourth followed.
He survived it by doing the one thing the clone didn't have data for. He didn't respond to the third strike at all. Just dropped his guard, stepped inside the arc, and let the blade pass over his shoulder.
For half a second he was inside Liang Zhenfeng's reach. Chest to chest. Close enough to see the texture of the fabric on the professor's collar.
His mouth twitched. Something between a smile and disbelief.
Am I... enjoying this?
The professor's elbow came up. Yan Ye barely pulled back in time.
Okay. No. Still terrifying. Noted.
Two minutes and forty seconds.
His vision was narrowing. The headache had become a living thing behind his eyes, pulsing with every exchange, tightening with every decision. Combat Reading was still feeding him information but his brain was losing the ability to process it fast enough. Like reading a book while someone slowly turned down the lights.
The professor shifted patterns. Something Yan Ye hadn't mapped. A transition between two combinations he'd never seen linked before. His body tried to respond with the counter for the first combination. The professor was already in the second.
Blade slipped past his guard, angled upward, and stopped against his throat.
Two minutes and forty seconds.
I knew exactly how I died that time. I know which transition I missed. I know what I'd do differently.
Reset.
One more.
He walked forward.
Three minutes and six seconds.
Reset.
He tried to walk forward again.
His body wouldn't cooperate. The headache had filled his entire skull. He couldn't hold the patterns anymore. The data was there but he couldn't reach it.[1]
No. I can do more. I wanted to try the other opponents. The T5, the T4s. I need more skills—
He couldn't form the next thought clearly.
Over three hundred deaths. ...Do I qualify for a famous army now?
"System. Exit."
His desk. Morning light. The clock on the wall read 9:52 AM.
Three hours. That was three hours.
He made it to the couch and collapsed. The headache throbbed. His body was fine. His brain was not.
He closed his eyes.
Someone knocked on the door.
...You're kidding me.
[1] Ironically, I was struggling to figure out how to write this scene out. I only came up with this because I’ve got a headache and really want to get away from the computer.That said, I’ll probably still spend a few more hours going over the chapter and figuring out what I can improve.Hope you enjoy it.